James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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Tuesday, June 12, 2012

(Video link) Novelist Neal Stephenson has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development of a new video game called Clang. This video explains the nitty gritty of the sword fighting game concept and how his company Subutai plans to achieve it.

Toward the end of the video, in a couple of tightly packed sentences, he explains how he sees the new digital publishing paradigm, and why he is turning to crowdsourcing for building his world:

“Why mess around with this at all? Subutai corporation is my attempt to figure out what the future of my craft looks like in a world where fiction gets distributed on electronic devices ten minutes after it’s written, where video games, movies, and graphic novels are produced from shared, digital assets using a common tool chain, and in which geek culture is fascinated by huge long-running franchises describing the arcs of imaginary worlds spanning thousands of years, where creators can route around the old funding models and get their production budgets directly via crowdsourcing.”

3 comments:

He had me when he said you can pay attention to meticulous detail of the many varieties of weapon fighting styles, martial arts and the evolution of close combat weaponry over the years. And furthermore, when the range of realistic, historically accurate weaponry is finally being explored when the best we can get is an assortment of unbalanced, highly stylized fantasy weapons that would never be practical in the real world.

An unusual, but definitely welcome feature on your blog! Thank you for that.I pledged my bit right when it started, it was my first Kickstarter pledge too.

Sadly, some other KS projects I've seen are abusing the system horribly. This one I have in mind has been going around artists' Facebook and Twitter sphere, but it still managed to raise a ridiculous money for an entirely despicable goal. :/

Thank goodness for crowdfunding, it's where most of my revenue comes from as a writer/artist. And for much the same reason: to bring immersive worlds to readers that might not make much sense as traditional print books. It's a great time to be a creative professional. :)